It's not like the author is the ultimate source. The text is.
An author can add symbolism also subcosciously, since its part of how we think in general (a symbol is a shortcut, a compressed metaphor/idea), and part of the cultural landscape too.
>The presence of something looks like a classic trope or symbolic use of words does not mean the author intended it, or was aware.
Might not mean it sometimes (it can be over-interpretation). Sometimes a banana is just a banana. But we've also have works were the majority of critics agree on their interpretation, including the author.
> It's not like the author is the ultimate source. The text is.
On what the author is trying to communicate, the author is the only source we can rely on.
> An author can add symbolism also subcosciously
He could, but since we can't reliably say anything about that, it is meaningless to make claims about it.
> Sometimes a banana is just a banana. But we've also have works were the majority of critics agree on their interpretation, including the author.
Whether or not a majority of critics agree is totally irrelevant to me. If the author agrees, that is a different matter. The problem is that so much of literary criticism happens without bothering to even try to check with the author. Unsurprisingly, authors quire regularly express surprise or exasperation at how literary critics interprets their works.
>On what the author is trying to communicate, the author is the only source we can rely on.
That's half true. Or wholly true if we put emphasis on his explicitly "trying to".
Because his work could also communicate other things that he wasn't trying, but are nethertheless apparent in the output.
Consider a racist writing his autobiography, and trying not to sound like a racist and avoids any open remark, but it still comes out in the text. In the same way, an authors beliefs and feelings on all kinds of things, even if subcoscious or hidden from himself, can also come out in the text, despite him not actually trying to communicate them.
If we don't consider just what the author explicitly tried to communicate, but all that's present in the final output, the author is not the "only source" anymore. We can also use other knowledge we have, of cultural norms, ideas of his era, symbolism, etc.
>Whether or not a majority of critics agree is totally irrelevant to me. If the author agrees, that is a different matter.
That's quite an inflexible view of literature/poetry etc, which has been shown to be lacking for near a century. Heck, even authors frequently say in their interviews: "I just put put these images and they are up to the reader to understand them in one way or another", or words to that effect. (Songwriters also are of this school very often: "my songs have no defined meaning, are open to interpretation etc".).
In the example of the racist author, how about if the author doesn't "agree" that his work is racist, but his working and portrayal of black characters makes evident that it is? It doesn't even need to be because he's lying, could just be that he considers the kind of attitude he has to blacks "objective" and "normal" and not racism.
The author is hardly the "only authority". If not for anything else because people have subconscious feelings, people hide things from themselves (even when they're not subconscious, they might downplay their importance when you talk to them, but come pouring down when they write), and of course, people lie.
It's not like the author is the ultimate source. The text is.
An author can add symbolism also subcosciously, since its part of how we think in general (a symbol is a shortcut, a compressed metaphor/idea), and part of the cultural landscape too.
>The presence of something looks like a classic trope or symbolic use of words does not mean the author intended it, or was aware.
Might not mean it sometimes (it can be over-interpretation). Sometimes a banana is just a banana. But we've also have works were the majority of critics agree on their interpretation, including the author.